Novelist Andrew O'Hagan explained the role dogs had played in his own life
when he discussed The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend
Marilyn Monroe.

Andrew O’Hagan, the Booker-nominated novelist swept into the Ways With Words festival to talk about his new novel about Marilyn Monroe and her beloved pooch, Maf.

The book – told from the point of view of the dog, a real fixture in Monroe’s life – is that rare thing: a comic novel that actually manages to raise a few serious points. Novelist Edna O’Brien went as far as to call it “an instant classic”.

Audience members in Dartington were more interested in finding out about the role dogs had played in O’Hagan’s own life.

“I grew up in a very chaotic environment,” said the author, who was born in Glasgow, “and the dog was always the most sensible creature in the house. My poor mother: she looked to the dog to do what my father couldn’t manage. And that meant everything, especially the provision of moral authority. No wonder I ended up writing a comedy in a dog’s voice.’

Other audience members were interested in the Hollywood film interest that surrounds The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and O’Hagan, while confirming he’d agreed a deal, is holding back on sequel rights.

“Maf was only three years old when Monroe died,” he said, “and her publicist went to work at the White House, taking the dog with her. That means my narrator was there through the Kennedy years and died the year of Nixon’s resignation.

“I can easily see a future book that would pick up the dog’s story. Maybe there’ll be 10 books. Maybe I’m the Anthony Powell of dog literature, busy for life with my masterpiece, 'A Bark to the Music of Time’.”

Before filming begins on the movie version, though, O’Hagan, who worked as this paper’s film critic for several years, wants to invent a new way of doing book events.

He has been working with actors to prepare readings, the first of which will take place this Sunday at 7.45 pm at London’s Southbank Centre, an hour involving four scenes from the book performed by Ian McDiarmid, Suzanne Bertish and Andrew Hawley, and a discussion with the author.

“It’s something new,” he told me. “Like an old-style Home Service programme drama with these brilliant actors playing many different roles.”